Foreign Tourist Arrivals Up 1.2 Per Cent First Five Months Of 2012

PUTRAJAYA, July 10 (Bernama) -- The number of foreign tourists visiting Malaysia went up by 1.2 per cent to 9.45 million between January and May this year from 9.32 million over the same period last year, said Tourism Minister Dr Ng Yen Yen. She said 73. 4 per cent of the total number of tourists were from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) countries, while the rest which also saw an increase in numbers were from other countries such as Saudi Arabia, China, Japan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Denmark and India. "The tourists who visited Malaysia between January and May this year contributed RM21.8 billion in revenue compared to RM21.4 billion over the same period last year," she told a news conference, here, Monday. Dr Ng said several approaches were taken such as introducing the Tourist Privilege Card which offered discounts of five to 20 per cent on goods at the shopping complexes in Bukit Bintang in order to attract more tourists to the country. She said tourists could obtain the card from the Malaysia Tourism Centre, Pavilion Bukit Bintang Tourism Council, tourism offices abroad or tourism companies. To date, 10,000 tourists have been using the privilege card. Dr Ng said services at the hotels, homestay and shopping complexes were constantly being upgraded to provide more comfort for tourists. She also said that 393 special charter flights from China, Korea and Taiwan arrived in Malaysia between January and June this year with 62,647 tourists who contributed RM150 million in revenue to the country. "We only gave an allocation of RM2.88 million in support of these charter flights to help in the promotions and so on. "Besides that, we are now working hard to get 120 charter flights this year from Russia. Currently, there are no direct fights from Russia to Malaysia," she said. Dr Ng said her ministry was also encouraging 'golf tourism' and so far, 29 of the 207 golf clubs in the country had joined the special committee on golf tourism and she hoped more clubs would do so. (US$1=RM3.18) -- BERNAMA